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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Crafty & Yummy Things--- Tried It Tuesday

Happy Tuesday! I'm sitting here at home for the second day in a row because this polar vortex has taken over. Today was our 5th cold/snow day of the year. Gosh, I don't even remember the last time we had 3 in a year. I'm doing my best to sit back and try not to be anxious thinking of all the things that I need to do when I go back to school with my kiddos {easier said than done, right???!!!!} So in order to try to keep my mind off of what I should be doing, and not worrying about it, I have done some things at home to keep me busy. So today I'm linking up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for a 'non-school' Tried it Tuesday.

I usually think of myself as a crafty person, however I hate that I can never find the time to do the crafts that I want to do. I've seriously pinned a million and there they sit. So I have decided to make a Valentine's Day banner for my house. Today was a purge day of everything 'WINTER'!!!! If it had a snowman on it or a snowflake on it, I put it away. I was saying to winter I am SOOOOOO over you! I don't have a lot of Valentine's day things to put up so this craft was perfect.

I started by going to the craft store and buying some burlap. I made a template out of a piece of cardboard so I could trace my shape to the burlap. I just picked triangles to start, because I've never worked with burlap before and didn't know what to expect. It wasn't that bad, however when cutting it did get all over the place. So if you're going to do a project like this, make sure you're ready for the clean-up after. Then I decided that I wanted to put a background on my banner. I had a chevron stencil. I did the background on all of the triangles first so they could dry. I used a small sponge to dab the paint on.

After I was done with the background I stenciled on the letters with red paint and a brush. I used a brush so it had a slightly different look than the background paint texture. When all of the pieces were dry I hot glued each triangle to a piece of ribbon. It's hard to see but it's white with red dots along the top and bottom. I left just a tad of the burlap sticking out on top, but you could glue right up to the edge if you wanted to.

There you have it! Instant Valentine's Day decoration. I had most of the supplies at home so the only thing that I had to buy was the burlap for this project. I only used about a yard of it, and it was on sale for 2.99 a yard. I bought some extra to have around in case I decide to do another small project with it. I think though it fits perfectly on the fireplace!

On to another great love of mine...trying new recipes. I don't have a lot in the house, because we haven't ventured out much the last few days so the goal was to make something with what we did have. I looked and looked and just didn't know what to do. Each year our school has a soup-off challenge. Where you can make a big crock-pot of soup bring it to school and compete with others for the title of best soup. Not to toot my own horn but I won 3 years in a row! It's sooooo fun!!!!! This year I didn't enter, however I did get some great recipes from it and ended up making one of them for our adventure in the cold!

Cheeseburger Soup: It was delicious--that's all I can say. Maybe not the best in terms of healthy eating, but it had veggies and milk, so that counts, right???? We followed the recipe almost exact, however we did not have potatoes so it didn't get any and it tasted just fine without them. I would be curious if we could use turkey sausage instead of ground beef so next time we're going to try that. We used Velveeta cheese instead of shredded cheese. I cubed the cheese up and it melted nicely. Lastly I garnished with just a little bit of shredded cheese. If we had chives that would have been a great topper too!

All of the veggies together.. YUM!

Adding everything together to melt the cheese!

Final Product!

Thanks for stopping by today! I promise next week I'll have something school related to chat about. I'm working on getting a TPT store open so that is both new & exciting!!

LOVE the banner! I don't have much in the Valentine's decor department either…maybe it's a "thing"…after putting away ALL of the winter decorations and realizing how much work that is, I never seem to want to buy February stuff that is displayed at all of the local craft stores. Poor February! Good for you for adding homemade crafty decor and good luck with your TPT store! I'm your newest follower!

Thanks for stopping by and for the comment Ash! I am excited to make more of them for different holidays/seasons. It's always nice to have a little something up around the house. I tend to do the same in the classroom!!! I'm still new at this blog thing, so I'm sorry I wasn't able to figure out how to reply to you by email. Thanks for following! I'm looking forward to checking out your blog as well! Ana

Thank you so much for stopping by! I love to read and respond to comments so I would really appreciate you taking the time to write me a comment about your thoughts on what you have read. Be sure you aren't a no-reply blogger so I can respond to you via email!